January 2019 Hacker News Web Stack Discussion

One problem: not much distinction given between a "web app" and a "website".

Many geeks jump right into using JavaScript on the client side, which is fine for creating web apps that work internally at corporations.

If the web app operates over the public internet, then I assume that the web app requires users to login and work from a dashboard. Web apps used for banking, tax preparing, and content management are examples.

These web apps are tools, meant to complete tasks. These web apps don't need to worry about being indexed by search engines. Users login, do work, and move on.

But if the project is a website that simply needs to display content, mainly text content, then JavaScript is unnecessary.

These publication-like websites work fine with HTML and some CSS on the client side. The server-side can be static HTML, produced by whatever means, such as a complex git-based workflow, a simple web-based CMS, or an author using an editor on a local machine with the user FTPing the HTML files to the server.

Little mention in the thread about the number of web app users or website visitors expected. A small web app that's used internally at a corporation probably does not need to worry about scaling via load balancers, etc.

Web apps that use React or Vue on the client side and node.js with a relational database and Nginx on the server side seem like a straightforward setup. JavaScript all the way.

I've used node.js with Express and Handlebars to create CMS apps. I used MySQL and/or CouchDB, which is a NoSQL database. For CouchDB, "views" are similar to stored procedures, and views are written in JavaScript. I like using CouchDB.

Something to learn this month:

Typescript

Vue.js

I'd still like to create a JavaScript single page application for soupmode.com, which is a private, web-based messaging app.